Immigrants and Immigration: Love and Justice – The Law of God and Public Policy

Immigrants and Immigration: Love and Justice
The Law of God and Public Policy

Justice requires that we love the strangers in our midst.

“For the LORD your God is a God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore.…” Deuteronomy 10:17-19

Increasingly, the debate about the immigration crisis tends to be polarized between those who regard illegal aliens—for here is the crux of the present crisis of immigration—as a population of entitled people and those who consider them a criminal class. Neither of these poles will be helpful in crafting just public policies.

It is doubtless true that many—perhaps millions—of those who come here are drawn by the opportunity for freebies of various kinds or to practice their nefarious designs for greater profit. We do not condone such motives, and we must not support them as matters of public policy; but neither must we fail to love those who have come among us with such motives.

But loving our neighbors does not mean simply shrugging our shoulders and accepting whatever it is they want to do. We love our neighbors when we seek justice for them, and when we work to help make them contributors to a just society. Justice, as we have seen, is the result of obedience to just laws. If we love our neighbors we will seek to create a society in which justice flourishes, and to which all may expect to make a meaningful contribution. Justice—neighbor-love—may at times require retribution toward some of these our neighbors, including deportation. Even then, however, we must not mete out punishments vindictively, but with a view to teaching justice and restoring justice to those who are to be punished, as well as to the society as a whole.

In the matter of public policy relative to immigrants and immigration, Christians must lead the way with thanksgiving and concrete gestures of love. Such an approach begins in worship, where we must not fail to welcome strangers and sojourners who are seeking to make a home in our community, and to help them to become part of our worshiping community if they so choose. Beyond that, other practices which churches might take up together could include providing food and clothing, temporary housing, instruction in English language, helping with job training and finding work, and much more. Such gestures of love, demonstrated by congregations everywhere, will position the Church well to join and perhaps even to lead the public policy debate.

Wherever churches can establish means of helping the strangers and sojourners in their communities—without breaking existing laws—they should do so gladly and with thanksgiving. Let the policies and practices of our churches be the harbingers and prototypes of what governments might do throughout the land.

Once Christians have begun to model neighbor-love for the aliens in their midst, they must insist that civil government at all levels reflect more of the holiness and righteousness and goodness of God’s Law in all their policies respecting immigrants and immigration. The prospects of change here must be undertaken with the long view in mind, with vision, patience, and determination. God loves the sojourner, and to the extent that the laws and policies of this land do not reflect that attitude, Christians must work to discover ways of reflecting that love more consistently through the engines of public policy.

Visit our website, www.ailbe.org, and sign up to receive our thrice-weekly devotional, Crosfigell, featuring writers from the period of the Celtic Revival and T. M.’s reflections on Scripture and the Celtic Christian tradition. Does the Law of God still apply today? Order a copy of T. M.’s book, The Ground for Christian Ethics, and study the question for yourself.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.